Affiliation of Prof. Kai Leonhard to the AVT.FVT
Prof. Kai Leonhard will be affiliated with the Chair of Fluid Process Engineering at AVT starting from July 2020.
Prof. André Bardow's move to ETH Zurich has also produced another structural change at the RWTH: Prof. Kai Leonhard will be affiliated with to the Chair of Fluid Process Engineering at AVT as long as the Chair of Technical Thermodynamics remains vacant.
In addition, we have been able to create a permanent position for Kai Leonhard at RWTH Aachen University. Thus, we are able to retain an excellent scientist with expertise that is very important for our local research landscape, especially for the Fuel Science Center of Excellence and the SFB Microgels. Kai Leonhard and his research group will continue to be based at the LTT.
The research group around Prof. Kai Leonhard works on model-based fluid design, in which fluids with certain useful properties are developed using material data models. The primary focus is on the development of new fuels from biomass with particularly low emissions from combustion. Additionally, the group is involved in a large number of collaborative projects on the design of solution-, reaction-, and separation-media for manufacturing products ranging from fuels to pharmaceuticals. However, a second focus is on molecular thermodynamics in pursuit of developing new material models. Molecular thermodynamics serves as the basis for modeling the material behaviors of fluids and solids that depend on molecular structure. Thus, through its analysis, the understanding of different material properties can be enhanced and new material models can be developed. A third and very important research focus is on the development of methods for determining reaction networks and the rate constants of the elementary reactions contained therein. Currently, these methods are applied mainly to combustion reactions; an initial project with process engineering applications has already been started, and more are planned.
We welcome Kai Leonhard to the AVT and look forward to working in hopefully even closer cooperation with him and his team.